The TSA Has Confiscated More Than 1,000 Guns at U.S. Airports This Year

It’s easy to forget that the Transportation Security Administration is out for more than just your bottled water. Indeed, every week TSA agents find dozens of firearms, most of them loaded, in travelers’ carry-on baggage at airports across the country.

Last year, the TSA found a total of 1,813 firearms in carry-on baggage through checkpoints around the country. As of the end of June 2014, the TSA has already found 1,025. According to the TSA, people may travel with firearms only if they are unloaded, declared and checked as baggage in locked, hard-sided containers. If officers find a firearm in your carry-on, the result is a citation with fines of up to $7,500 or arrest.

At the bottom of the post, you can search to see the number of firearms found in carry-ons at all major airports. You’ll find that many of the airports included on this list cater to a lot of travelers, like No. 1, the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, which is the busiest airport in the U.S. Los Angeles’s LAX, which is the U.S.’s second busiest airport, however, is much further down the list.

Here’s a list of the top-10 airports where the TSA has confiscated the most guns in 2014, along with TSA Blog photos of the various weapons — and things that look like weapons — found at those airports:

About The Numbers

The Wall Street Journal examines numbers in the news, business and politics. Some numbers are flat-out wrong or biased, while others are valid and help us make informed decisions. We tell the stories behind the stats in occasional updates on this blog.